News from the Bellbrook High School newspaper class

The Reasons Behind the High Number of U.S. Mass Shootings

By: Kayla Stephensen

In the past two months, the United states has seen 5 mass shootings: the Rancho Tehama shooting spree killing 5, the Texas church massacre killing 26, the Wal-Mart shooting in suburban Denver killing 3, the Edgewood business park shooting killing 3 and the Las Vegas Strip massacre killing 58. It is no wonder the United States gets the poor reputation for the high number of mass shootings; however, when comparing the number of guns to the number of mass shooters, it makes statistical sense as to why the U.S. has so many mass shootings. Every other country has less than 46 million guns and less than 18 mass murder shooters within the years 1966 and 2012. The United States has 270 million guns and has had 90 mass shooters in the same time period. If a country were to have the preceding stats, then 0.000039% of gun owners in that country would be a mass murder shooter. In the U.S. however, 0.000033% of gun owners are mass murderers.

According to a 2016 study, from 2000 to 2014, the death rate in the U.S. from a massacre is 1.5 per one million people. In Switzerland and Finland, the same rate was 1.7 and 3.4 respectively, suggesting that mass shootings are not as common in America as previously thought.

The number of U.S. mass shootings, although high, is only looking at the “raw scores,” and not ratios between population of guns to people. Statistics say it all.